| dc.description.abstract | During early seventies and early eighties economic conditions in general had been favourable for Kenyan farm sector. Following market liberalizations in the late eighties, farmers and in particular livestock farmers experienced economic hardship. The economic situation facing livestock industry was characterized by wide fluctuation and unpredictability of the livestock and livestock product prices and uncertainity in livestock production and marketing. These shocks coupled with economic conditions in the livestock sector rendered profit-oriented decision-making by livestock farmers and other participant in the industry difficult.
The objective of this study was therefore to: 1) analyze the relationships between the supply of livestock products and their influencing factors, 2) estimate the livestock products supply responses (in terms of signs and absolute magnitudes) and analyze their effect on the supply of livestock products and 3) analyze livestock products' supply determinants.
The model was a single equation. The estimators of the model were derived by way of regression and correlation after subjecting the data collected to vigorous testing for stationarity using Augmented Dick-Fuller test. Conclusions were made on the basis of R (correlation coefficient) and the associated R2 (coefficient of determination) as well as the t statistic. The results indicate that cattle and cattle hides were price elastic while sheep and' goats (shaots) were inelastic. The price elasticity for cattle was 0.57, shoats 0.19 and cattle hides 0.88. The long run price elasticity was 0.22 for cattle, -0.08 for shoats and -0.01 for cattle hides.
These results show positive short run price elasticity while long run elasticity was negative except for number of cattle sold. On the basis of t-value, the findings were conclusive with all the variables analyzed being statistically significant. | en_US |
